May 25, 2020

The first community submission for this dead-parent blog was my very living Mommy. It was very wholesome: take that, general level of parental trauma!

We also launched the Monday Mourning Podcast today. After 8 hours of editing, very little was done at all, and we are uproariously proud of the result — check it out!

Not much has changed in the so-called now, but the future is starting to morph into blurry, drastic forms. For one, I might return home, to the suburbs of Minneapolis, to wait out the economic depression in my father’s old house while my brother, the usual occupant, teaches in Central America so as to Zoom into elementary school classrooms mere blocks away from his apartment.

Even the idea of returning to my home state, albeit for less than a calendar year, feels a bit like retiring. I wish that were an option for recent graduates, or anyone weary of the surrealtopia unraveling in their lap, to retire, or hibernate, or dissolve into a gelatinous form that can be zapped with a cattle prod when the stock market manages to change its underwear. Until then, why not go to my Dusty Daddy’s Deathnasium and chill out for a while?

All is up in the air, but it does feel good to have something in the future. Having finally been regurgitated from my educational tract, and the loss of my summer job, I have felt, at times, like I am stumbling into oblivion day after day. I have had the sensation of a past and a present, but, it can weigh heavy having no clear future in these quarantinged times.

My roommate, Bean Curd the Wise, said that this whole thing is a bizarre opportunity to relax, for those of us who have been lucky enough to be confined to a generous degree of comfort these last few months. It’s nice to have something to look forward to, even if it’s fleeing to the barren tundra of Minnesota for the winter to podcast while snow slowly cakes me and my lover and doggy within my Dad’s — my house. But heck, if I’m gonna hibernate, I gotta do it right.

Yellow-Flavored Cartoon by Cecilia Bahls and Harry Jensen